


Once Again, and Always

by InsectKin



Category: Deathless - Catherynne M. Valente, The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, birds that turn into husbands, fights that go on forever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 17:04:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6865126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsectKin/pseuds/InsectKin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bird falls in the darkness and becomes a husband. The Sun Summoner and the Darkling have worn a groove in the universe, and they get up once more to play their parts and say their lines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Again, and Always

She had waited, watching the leaves of the tree outside her window turn red then brown then disappear, tiny green buds signaling the start of another spring. Birds made nests, migrated, returned; some of those birds fell from trees and turned into husbands, coming for the other girls in her orphanage. She had seen it happen before and she would see it happen again: in this lifetime, in the ones past, the ones to come. The birds fell in threes – they always did – and the husbands were short or tall, thin or fat, as each of the girls desired. When the time was right she drew each girl to the window with her, made them watch as their husband sprang into being.

She pulled moonlight around the tree so the girls could see as the birds hit the ground and blossomed into husbands, and when the knock came at the door she drew starlight across the hall to light the way. They opened the door to the men on one knee, each with the same line: "I have come for the girl in the window."

The other girls in the orphanage were married off, husbands of rank, of stature, though they had been birds just an hour before. She waited, patient as she had to be, as she always was. It had happened before, it would happen again.

He would find her, he always did.

And when the husbands had come for all the girls of age – the three of them, as there always were – she waited at the window alone. She didn't need a husband, had had enough, would have more, but this was the way the story went. When the mice in the walls of the orphanage began to whisper of his arrival, she remembered their voices, too, and was unsurprised.

She didn't see if he was a bird, didn't see if he had fallen from a tree, because the night was complete darkness. The moon didn't rise and the stars hid or were smothered, as they had been the last time and the time before and would be in lifetimes to come.

She didn't look out the window because she was folding the few clothes she had, the things she knew she would want. The snow was falling, even if no one could see it, for now it was cold enough that even the mice in the walls had huddled together and were, once again, silent.

When the knock came, she didn't reach for the stars to light the corridor – for her, there was no need. She had walked the hallway before, in this life and in ones past, and her feet knew the way to the entrance, her hand knew the location of the latch. She opened the door and there was a break in the darkness, an area where existed just the two of them: her, and a new and familiar husband on one knee in the snow.

She had learned long ago that she preferred dark hair and sharp cheeks, grey eyes and a strong jaw. This husband had all of those things, he always had. He always would.

"I have come for the girl in the window," he said, his tone just as she would have chosen, his gaze confident and calm. He, too, knew how the story went, had known forever that he would kneel in the snow and leave with a wife.

She hesitated in the doorway, letting the thousands of moments and years bleed into each other, struggling to separate out this cycle from the ones before and the ones after. Struggling to identify herself within the circular tide.

Snow collected on his shoulders and her own breath frosted in the small island of visibility between them. The darkness around the two of them was vast, complete.

"Invite me in, Alina."

She hesitated for a last moment before the cycle continued, a tiny hitch in the groove before it pulled her along. Then she turned, as she always did, reaching through the darkness for the moon and the stars and wrapping them around her, blinding the city in a beacon of light. She opened the door further and her husband, still kneeling in the snow, looked up at her and smiled.  


**Author's Note:**

> The "invite me in" line was when I fell in love with Deathless, and there is so little crossover fic! I hope you like it.


End file.
